General market prediction using position specification language

Abstract

Methods evaluating propositions about timeseries are provided. A service accepts a proposition about one or more timeseries, and the service monitors those timeseries. A proposition can reference multiple timeseries with different time intervals and different units. When new data is available, the service evaluates the proposition to determine if the proposition is true, false, or neither. The service automatically performs unit conversions and selects relevant, previously observed values before evaluating a proposition when new data is available.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 267,151, filed Dec. 7, 2009, and entitled “General Prediction Market”, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates to evaluating propositions. More specifically, the invention relates to receiving, validating and evaluating statements about timeseries data.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]Several Web sites provide some form of “prediction market”1. Examples include Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), Predictify.com, MyPrognostic.com, InTrade.com, Hubdub.com, Pickum.com, BetFair.com, Intrade.com, iPredicts.com, Nostradamical.com, and Dotblu.com. Site editors or in some cases users themselves can publish specifications for events, propositions, or questions, and then users can take positions with respect to these instruments. A wide variety o...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent text describes a need for a prediction market that allows users to take arbitrary and complex positions with respect to various variables. The technical problem addressed is the difficulty in allowing users to formulate positions that are not pre-defined by the market, while also ensuring that the market can evaluate those positions safely and efficiently, and without introducing issues such as syntactical errors or opacity. The system described in the patent text fulfills this need by providing a facility for rich positions of arbitrary and complex specifications that can be evaluated automatically.

Problems solved by technology

Additionally, in many cases, a user cannot take a position that references multiple variables—especially those with different intervals.

However, such synthetic positions typically suffer from several problems.

The synthetic position might not replicate the desired position exactly, the costs of multiple constituent positions may be prohibitive or at least troublesome, and a user's actual, net position can become opaque to other users.

(Each of these problems arise in real over-the-counter derivative contracts.)

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